Twenty
by violet-phoenix-rose
Summary: Twenty people. Twenty events. Twenty perspectives. For MopCat's 20 Word challenge. Rating is precautionary. Some chapters are combined with other challenges as I see fit.
1. Inseperable

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

A/N: For MopCat's 20 Word challenge. Each chapter will focus on a different character. This one is George about a month after Fred died.

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**Inseparable**

We were inseparable, so much that even Mum got us confused until we stopped growing - Fred was half an inch taller than me, and somehow that got her straight. No matter, there's none of that left anymore. No more confusion, no more plans of panic and total anarchy (when we could get away with it), no more Fred. I'm not depressed - if anything, and this terrifies nearly every single person I know, I'm more than making up for his absence.

Everything we did was done together, and now I'm flying solo without a clue of how to pull it off. He was always the smarter one, I've gotta say. It wasn't like I was totally dense, 'cause half the stuff we pulled was my idea, but he knew HOW to pull stuff off and I didn't - well, I picked it up at times, but usually I was less key.

I found a list of stuff we were gonna do someday in a box of old school stuff yesterday. Mum's finally cleaning out the attic, which kinda reminded me to 'diffuse' something we put up there ages ago, and I found a box with our names on it and took it back to my apartment. Most of that junk made its way to the second-hand shops, but the list... What can I say, I've gotta keep the thing.

What's funny is we had a lot crossed out on the list, stuff we DID do - the swamp during the Umbridge affair was one, as was feeding a salamander some fireworks and torching a particularly tacky hat of Mum's. She never did find out what we did to it... Yeah, there was a lot still ON the list too as well - we never did feed Percy's owl firewhiskey, or hot-wire a speed-trap... Too much, too many great ideas to mention.

We were inseperable, and that was all that stayed ours - until that too was taken from me.


	2. Once

A/N: For the 100 Times and Nameless challenges ALONG with 20 Word... How the 100 Times challenge (by the lovely sick-at-heartxx) is involved is quite obvious. The Nameless challenge (on the Writing Challenges forum) is more subtle - it is the reason I am not able to mention what character/pairing this is. It's rather obvious, but just in case... review or PM me with your guess.

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**Once**

He only really loved once.

True, he had been closer than close to three friends. There had been other people in his life who he cared about. But that was always a friendship kind of love, or more rarely a familial love. No, there was one person, only one, who was different.

She had appeared in his world quite by accident - a protégée of someone worth trusting, a young woman in a key place, and yet she was more than that. Had it been her looks that had caught his eye? No; there was nothing particularly striking about hot pink hair, not even on her. Instead, it had been the way she was so ALIVE that caught him by surprise. So young, so deserving of someone more like her, and yet he had realized how much she mattered to him.

A year of seeing each other in passing had been ended by a death, and he had plummeted, fallen deep within himself. As feelings grew stronger, he reminded himself more and more frequently that she deserved so much better than him. _She's 13 years younger than you are_ was the refrain of the next months.

Then another unthinkable death had occurred, along with a near-death that sent the world in another direction. Confronted by another person he trusted, he had admitted his feelings for her. Shockingly, she confessed her own feelings for him, and the world seemed to stop in that moment.

They had ten months together. It was the worst of times; though they themselves remained unharmed through those months, they lived in fear of the moment their lives would end at the hands of the enemy.

On the night it all ended, he told her to stay, to look after their child while he fought. She hadn't listened, the same way he hadn't expected her to. They both breathed their last fighting to make the world a better place.

He only really loved once.


End file.
